PM Bidzina Ivanishvili said on Tuesday that tariffs for consumption of natural gas would be reduced by 10% starting from this month.

“We will continue to work on this issue; we have a great desire and I think that we will manage to further reduce gas tariff,” PM Ivanishvili said at a news conference.

The Energy Ministry said details of planned reduction have yet to be finalized.

Households in Tbilisi currently pay 50.62 tetri per cubic meter of gas and the tariff varies from 49 to 55 tetri in the provinces.

Gas distributor in the capital city is KazTransGas Tbilisi, which is wholly owned by the KazTransGas, part of Kazakh state-owned company KazMunayGas.

Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, became sole distributor of natural gas in Georgia, except of Tbilisi, after acquiring Itera-Georgia in November.

Speaking at a news conference on February 5, PM Ivanishvili said that trend of reduction of retail price on petroleum and medicines was visible recently; the Prime Minister said it was a result of scrapping cartel-type price fixing schemes, which, he said, was in practice during the previous authorities.